


The General's Dreams

by verybadhedgehog



Series: Asking Too Much [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dream interpretation, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Toast, Wish Fulfillment, not Aftermath compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7685461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verybadhedgehog/pseuds/verybadhedgehog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One year after the Starkiller catastrophe, an uneasy, nervous General Hux picks up a tracker signal close to the ship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Tracker (An Unexpected Return)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a revised version of chs 1-3 of the abandoned work "An Unexpected Return" –  <http://archiveofourown.org/works/5696437> – you will find a longer author's note there explaining my decisions related to revising and reposting this work, including making it compliant with Fierce And Barely Concealed, with which it is now part of a series.
> 
> Other notes about the work and this little 'verse in general – it sticks to the old headcanons I developed for Hux back before "Armitage Day" when we found out his actual backstory.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux goes over the events after the Starkiller catastrophe, and the departure of Ren, one year on.
> 
> Then he picks up an unexpected signal, very close by.

It had been a year. A year where the ship had operated well. Campaigns had been fought, traitors vanquished, disloyal populations suppressed, and renegades liquidated, all under a stable chain of command. The workload of the Facilities team had been reduced, as there were no longer frequent open reqs to repair or replace equipment due to lightsaber damage.

Yet General Hux had not been at ease. The failure and loss of Starkiller still weighed heavily on him. The chain of command seemed stable, but after his failure, was he to be considered the weak link in that chain? His duties seemed to entail more busywork than they had before. Was he simply being kept occupied while a rival was manoeuvred into position? Was he being needlessly paranoid? 

It was true that there was a great deal of work to be done, and a lot of it was managerial in nature: recruiting new engineers and technical specialists after the loss of personnel on Starkiller; managing logistics; keeping in the loop with regards to finding money to pay for a second Starkiller. Sometimes he wanted nothing more than to get stuck in to actually planning the Starkiller II construction project. He would open the old front end engineering documents and basic engineering diagrams, compare them with the as-built diagrams and his project notes, and then, after sighing at them unproductively, close them again.   

And then there was the business of Kylo Ren’s retrieval, rehabilitation, and departure. It was central to what troubled him. The whole sequence of events that had followed the catastrophe troubled him. He had retrieved and evacuated Kylo Ren as ordered, and had been shocked and disturbed at the extent of the Knight Commander’s injuries. Bleeding out in the snow. White pale. Holding on to life only with visible effort. Hux had muttered, “You poor bastard, you poor poor bastard. You are not in a good way,” as he and his team had followed their training for tactical field care, applying pressure pads and getting the casualty quickly onto a stretcher and onto the evac shuttle. Everything went as per simulator training, but then he’d done something that had played no part in any training manual. He’d gently stroked Kylo Ren’s face and looked into his eyes. Ren had stared back at him like he was… like he was pleading for help. He’d whispered to Ren, “I’m going to look after you. Stay with me. Don’t leave me.” He’d meant it to mean, “Please stay conscious as this is your best chance of survival until we reach the _Finalizer_ and transfer you to Medical.” But it also seemed to mean more than that. It seemed ominous. Heavy.

Hux was already distraught with the loss of his life’s defining work, yet this situation with Ren bit and tore at him in a way he knew it shouldn’t, even given their history. Their entanglement, he allowed himself to call it. Once he’d returned to the _Finalizer_ with his team and delivered Kylo Ren to the medical bay to be given units and units and units of blood, to be stitched up, patched up with synthflesh, immersed in bacta, hooked up to machines, fussed over by droids and watched over by doctors, it had properly hit him. He had nearly lost him: the bastard had nearly gone and fucking died. And Hux had not liked that at all. 

He had made a priority of visiting medbay to check up on their most important patient: it was after all his responsibility to assess the Knight Commander’s recovery, estimate when he would be fit to return to service and report back to the Supreme Leader. He’d visited more often than he had been planning to, and had spent more time at the patient’s bedside than duty and responsibility strictly required. 

On learning, via Captain Phasma, that eye witnesses reported Ren taking a direct hit from a Wookiee bowcaster at fifteen metres, he had been amazed. This blow would have felled any other fighter, and yet it had not deterred the Knight from fighting a lightsaber duel and nearly winning. Hux had been impressed by this evidence of the sheer strength of the man, and doubly impressed by his bravery, and had made a point of telling him so. Ren had tried to throw Hux’s earnest praise back in his face with a “Don’t patronise me, you sycophant,” which in itself had cheered Hux as it showed that the arrogant fucker was feeling more like himself again, and then Ren had said more quietly “Thank you. That means something, even coming from you.” 

They had spoken, as Ren lay in a medbay cot, of what had gone wrong. They quite quickly covered all the ground that needed to be covered regarding Ren’s atrocious decision making and personal compromise, first on Takodana and then on the base. Hux had blamed Ren, of course. Ren had blamed himself in his usual sulking, petulant way. And then they had begun, only begun, to talk about other things that had gone wrong. Obliquely, at first.

“I didn’t mean to sabotage our arrangement.”

“Neither did I.”

And so it went. Hux had never liked to think of himself as a man who had or entertained a great deal of messy emotions, but he did allow, during these discussions, that he had very many powerful and important _opinions_ concerning Kylo, concerning what had happened between them and what might be awaiting them when they reported to the Supreme Leader. 

 

***

 

_“I’m going to look after you. Stay with me. Don’t leave me.”_

But Kylo Ren had left. It had been a year since he had gone, without announcement, without warning, without anything but the clothes on his back, broken lightsaber and the small box of family relics which Hux referred to in his own mind as _“that stupid fucking Darth Vader shrine”_. 

Kylo Ren had gone and left and Hux had found out only when he went to the conference room for a meeting with the Supreme Leader, expecting a wounded but recuperating Ren to be present. He had made what he since realised to be the junior bloody cadet error of letting his surprise show on his face. The Supreme Leader had taken great pleasure in informing Hux that Kylo Ren had departed the ship to complete his training. There had been relish in his voice when he said “You must have only just missed him, General.” In the very moments of Starkiller’s collapse, Hux had been commanded to report to the Supreme Leader, and to bring Ren with him. And now this responsibility had been taken away from him, and in that moment he was sure that he was a busted flush. 

Hux had relived this scene in his mind time and time again, and it became more and more obvious that the Supreme Leader had known that something was going on, and that he was deliberately and subtly punishing Hux. 

He had expected a much less subtle punishment, and been very surprised when he not been dragged up before a court martial, not lost his rank nor, seemingly his position as the Supreme Leader’s protégé. This troubled him, too. He was living on borrowed time, with demotion (at best) hanging over his head like a sharp and vicious axe. His days were numbered, but he did not know when the trap door would open beneath him. He was being toyed with, and there was nothing he could do about it. He kept on with his duties.

It had been a year. Hux kept on thinking about it, never letting it distract him from his duties and the immense responsibility that remained on his shoulders, but never going more than a handful of days without thinking “He separated us on purpose,” or “It’s been a long time,” or “I do miss him,” or “I hope he’s OK”. Getting into bed to sleep, he would often find his bed felt rather cold and empty without that semi-feral beast thrashing and moaning beneath him; and he might reflect on the moments of calm after they’d fucked the pain away, or fucked some kind of temporary calm and stability into being, or whatever the hell it was that they had been doing. (It really had worked as behaviour modification. Hux had kept stats while the Shag Some Sense Into Him protocol was in operation and you didn’t have to have taken Introduction to Statistics to see a strong inverse correlation between frequency of encounters and frequency/intensity of public rage incidents. Hux was more proud of this achievement which of course he had to keep entirely secret than he was of many of his public successes.) All this had been shortly before everything had gone to shit, first personally, then professionally. 

In the last three or four months, his nights had been troubled by odd dreams.

Not every day, but every now and again, after dealing with a tranche of email or signing off on some reports, he would check his personal charts for any sign of Kylo Ren’s location tracker. It popped up on the charts most often in the system where the Supreme Leader had his personal hideaway, and occasionally showed up in systems where a Resistance presence was suspected. _He must be hunting down rats and punishing enemies of the First Order, but never in the same places where we are hunting down rats and punishing enemies of the First Order._ The longer time had gone on, the more sure General Hux had become that the Supreme Leader was deliberately keeping him and Ren apart.

 

***

 

It had, finally, been a year. In his personal quarters, after his duty hours and after his dinner, General Hux finished signing off a batch of documents. He picked up his personal datapad, opened his charts and checked for Kylo Ren’s location tracker. He felt it to be most likely a futile exercise, but it had become a habit. 

His breath shivered in his throat. The tracker showed up within close range of the ship.

_He’s coming back. He’s coming here. He must be coming here to board the ship. He must have finished his training. I don’t know what that even means. He’ll have changed. For the better, I hope. This could be dangerous._

The General brushed off his dress jacket and greatcoat, and combed his hair. He put the jacket on, and expected to be summoned shortly to the assembly room for a conference with the Supreme Leader and the now returned and newly graduated Knight. Would Hux have to call him Darth something? No, that was the Sith, and they were no more. He’d never paid much attention to the history of the mystical and magical. Hux breathed deeply to calm himself, and combed his hair again. Best to have the parting ruler-straight. Whenever there are uncertainties in life, one can always be sure of one’s own neat and tidy appearance, if nothing else.

The door control panel indicated someone at the door. An officer come to summon him, he expected. “Who is it?”

“I have been away for some time. I need to speak with you. Open the door.” The voice was metallic, distorted, and so, so familiar. His heart leapt and pounded.

Hux opened the door, and a robed and masked Kylo Ren entered. Hux made a tremendous effort to keep his facial expression set on “resolute and stern, with possibility of faint loathing”. He nodded his head curtly. “Good evening, Knight Commander. This is a most unexpected pleasure.”

“Good evening, General.” Kylo Ren raised his hands to his face, unclipped the air latches from his mask and removed it. He repeated, this time in his own soft, velvety, resonant voice, “Good evening, General.” There was a faint smile on his face, beautiful and terrifying. A great scar stretched across his forehead, across his brow and over his cheek and jaw. It was pale now, where it had been pink and only just starting to heal the last time Hux had seen it. Ren’s eyes were still so intense, so glowing. Hux bit down on his cheek and breathed slowly and deliberately. 

The door lock activated. “The Force,” thought Hux. It had been a long time since he had seen the Force used, and even something so small, so minuscule as the click of a lock seemed impressive again. He was on high alert internally; feeling that anything could happen and knowing that if Ren should act unpredictably, up to and including killing him on the Supreme Leader’s instruction, there would be nothing very much he could do about it.

“Have you completed your training?”

“I have learnt much _of_ the Force. I have become even more powerful. I have learnt much _through_ the Force, “ he continued, “It is very subtle and has many uses.”

Hux should have known better than to expect a straight answer. He tried another tack. “What brings you here? A mission?”

“I am here on my own initiative.”

Kylo Ren placed his helmet on the table in the middle of Hux’s living area. He approached Hux in a slow, gliding, almost casual fashion, and stood close in front of him. 

“I am here on my own initiative and I am here in secret. My vessel is cloaked. Very few have seen me approach the officers’ deck, and I have clouded the memories of any who have.”

“So, you have come to see me?”

“Yes. I have come to see you.” Ren raised a gloved hand to Hux’s face, and gently touched his cheek. “It’s been a long time.” Hux shivered. “Are you afraid?”

“I am not afraid,” Hux lied. He had never been afraid before, but he had now a strong and unnerving sense that something was different about Ren. He could not trust what the Supreme Leader and his magic might have done to him.

“In the course of my training, and then in the course of my meditations and researches into the Force, it became very clear to me that I must come and see you, and speak to you.”

“Why, did you suddenly remember that you’d forgotten to give me a kiss goodbye?” Hux felt brave enough to be sarcastic, and in doing so found relief in the feeling of being on familiar ground.

“Oh, that’s right. I did not, as you remind me, give you a kiss goodbye. Let me mend this omission,” and he took Hux’s face in both gloved hands this time, and kissed him long and hard. Hux felt dizzy. He had not been kissed for a year and ten days and he tried to recall if, through their encounters, from sweaty desperation and mutual contempt to joyous depravity and something approaching tenderness, it had ever felt quite like that. 

Ren kissed him again, gently this time. “I have missed your lips,” he whispered.


	2. The Toast And The Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren eats dinner and acts oddly… personable. Hux is very touched to receive a thoughtful gift. He recounts a series of perplexing dreams, listens to some enigmatic pronouncements about the Force and asks an important question.

Kylo Ren stood in the private quarters of General Hux, close to the General, as was his habit, and spoke quietly and portentously, as was also his habit.  “I am here, you could say, as a test of my powers. I have discovered what it is that I am required to do. I know, now, what my grandfather’s legacy must be. And I know that I have wasted so many years getting to this point.”

Hux felt fear lurch up inside him, and pushed it down with his customary discipline. He took two steps back, and regained his military bearing. Calm, straight-backed, strong and with honour. “I am not afraid. If I am to die here, by your hand, so be it. It is my regret not to have been able to serve the First Order for longer.”

“No! No! That’s not what this is! That is not what this is.” Ren looked shocked and saddened as he spoke. “I am not here to harm you.”  He stepped forward and embraced Hux in a bear hug. Hux was still too on edge to hug back. Hugging had never been part of their repertoire. What was this, then? 

“Dion Hux,” Ren said, “Listen to me. I am not here to harm you. I need to talk with you.” Hearing his first name spoken by Ren for only maybe the third or fourth time ever only served to confuse Hux more. But the tone of Ren’s voice was warm, and he found himself letting down his guard a little bit. He cautiously hugged back. His face was in Ren’s black cloud of hair, and Ren’s hair still smelled just like it always did, of sandalwood and Bezari cardamom. He held Ren more tightly, and breathed in deeply.

“I thought that’s what this was. I thought you were going to cut me down. A sacrifice to mark the end of your training. Or to clear the way for my replacement.”

“I didn’t come all this way to kill you, you crashing dullard. I didn’t come all this way and learn all that I have learned and gain so much power in the Force in order to kill you.”

“I didn’t think you’d _want_ to. Only that you might have been _required_ to.”

“No. That is not at all why I am here.”

“Forgive me, Ren. I am a little on edge.” He spread his arms across Ren’s broad back.  “My doom has been hanging over me for some considerable time, and, well, you were required to kill… before.” Hux’s sudden rethinking of what he was about to say weakened his sentence. But there was no mistaking the incident to which he referred. 

Ren inhaled sharply like a man in terrible pain, and then sighed. He pulled away from Hux. “That is part of the story that I have to tell you about why I am here, and what is in my future.”

Hux wished, not for the first time, that Ren would be a little less enigmatic and a little less bloody self-important.

“So tell me.”

“It may prove to be a long story. I haven’t told it before.”

“Will I need to take notes? Is there going to be a written test?”

A lopsided smile played over Ren’s face, and a subtle ache flared through Hux’s chest. “If you like, and no,” Ren said. “But it will have to wait, because I’m hungry. Get some food sent up.”

“I ate in the mess.”

“Say you’re working late and you feel hungry or whatever. Get a spare portion of something sent up on a tray.”

“Call down yourself.”

“It is not known that I am here. Do you not pay any attention when I speak? Get some food sent up.”

“As you wish, Knight Commander,” Hux said, with all the sarcasm he could find.

“I need to be not obviously present,” said Ren, scooping up his helmet and slipping into Hux’s sleeping quarters, closing the door behind him.

The helmet must have been new, as the old one had been lost. It already had a couple of dents in it. Hux meant to ask if it had been a spare or if Ren had obtained, or made, a new one. He had a lot of questions.

A droid arrived with the food. Hux was relieved that the door control unlocked and opened normally, after a second of worry that Ren had locked it in a way that would require use of the Force to unlock. He dismissed the droid.

Ren came out of the bedroom without the outer layers of his robes. He wore just his narrow trousers and a black under shirt with long sleeves. He had also taken off his boots and wore what appeared to Hux to be really, really comfortable socks, proper, top of the line, no finer socks available, socks. 

For just one second the thought, “Fucker’s still got better socks than me,” crossed Hux’s mind. 

Ren sat at the table in the most unmilitary fashion; legs sprawled out on the bench, arms at odd angles, hunched over the tray of food, looking like an over-sized teenage boy. No change there, thought Hux.

“Ooh. Braised beast of some kind, and some of those nice little green bean things.” 

Hux nodded. “It was good dinner tonight.”

“They do feed you well.”

“They? This is all personally approved by me, I’ll have you know. Good cooks, good supplies.”

“There was a supply vessel docking at the same time I came on board.”

So, Ren’s shuttle was docked in hangar B where logistics and supply vessels were currently being received, and not on the main deck. 

“Supply vessel traffic is very frequent while we are in this system. Important to keep our troops fed. An army marches on its stomach. And it’s simply another way for a system to pay taxes.”

“You're brass. You only march up and down corridors,” Ren pointed out, while eating.

“It's important to keep Captain Phasma in roast chickens. Keeps morale up.”

They both laughed. Ren very rarely came into the officers’ mess at meal times, but he had done so enough to be familiar with the unbridled joy and enthusiasm with which the redoubtable Captain Phasma approached the eating of a roast chicken. Or two.

Inside Hux’s head, a tiny voice spoke up. _Sit. rep. Everything a bit strange. Sharing jokes, some would say banter, with Ren. Have seen him smile more in last ten minutes than in the last forever. Humour warmer than I remember. No particularly cutting jibes. Impressions: cautiously positive. Remain on guard for instability. Find out why docked in non standard hangar, why cloaked, who knows he is here. Kiss him again._

Ren dabbed up the juices of the braised meat with one of a pair of bread rolls. He then picked up the other bread roll and stared at it like it was the most special, most peculiar bread roll he had ever seen.

Then he unhooked his lightsaber from his tunic. Hux could not help flinching slightly, if only from a health and safety perspective.

“It’s OK. I mended it. It works better now, in fact.” Ren switched on the weapon, and three blades of crackling, burning plasma poured instantly from it. He held it above the table, on its edge, one blade of the cross piece mere inches from the surface.

The blades still seemed most unruly to Hux’s eyes. “Be careful. Don’t cut your hand off, and also please be careful with the table because you could burn it.” Ren’s unpredictable behaviour was not of the life-threatening variety, it turned out, but it was still impossible to control.

Ren picked up the bread roll, and, his face close enough to the blades that Hux could see their vermilion glow reflected off his cheeks, he rapidly passed the bread roll over the blade with the flick of a wrist. A slice fell onto the table. “Do it at the right speed,” he said, repeating the action, “and it makes toast.”

“Toast,” said Hux dully, as if drunk. “You’re making toast.”

“I’m making toast.” Another perfectly brown slice of toast hit the table. “Next one’s a special piece for you.” The next piece of toast fell, and Ren picked it up. He didn’t give it straight to Hux, but instead held it just above the tip of the cross piece, and moved it carefully. He looked at his handiwork. “Other side now,” he said and flipped the toast over, again moving it above the burning plasma. He checked his work again. “Not a bad job”. He switched off the lightsaber, and looked up at Hux, who was still standing in an at-ease position. “I made you a piece of toast.” He stretched out his hand, offering the piece of toast to Hux, who accepted it as if in a daze. 

Hux looked at the toast. He turned the toast over, and looked at the other side. He flipped the toast back and forth. “Thank you. It’s lovely.” He bit back tears, to his own surprise. “It’s lovely.” On one side of the toast was etched in a darker shade of well-done toast, the name DION, and on the other side, HUX.

“Why are you giving me toast? It’s personalised toast and I didn’t know there was such a thing. Thank you very much.” Hux made a valiant attempt to regain military bearing which cut in just in time to deliver a nice formal, “thank you very much”. His mother and father had brought him up always to say thank you, even for peculiar and unexpected gifts. Even if they were from unpredictable murderers. Even if they were from unpredictable murderers you were falling in love with. Thank you very much for the toast.

Hux turned away, and selected “boiling” on the control panel of his water dispenser.  “I’ll make some tea. I think I would like some tea. I have questions to ask you, and you have a long story to tell me.”

He sat in his desk chair, facing Ren, and sipped his tea.

“I’ve been having odd dreams.”

“Tell me about them. They’re part of what we need to talk about.”

“I’ve had these repeating dreams, for the past three or four months. They come in batches of similar dreams, all the same thing but with different endings. I never used to dream much. I don’t know why it’s been happening, but I suspect you may be in some way to blame.”

“Good dreams or bad dreams?”

“Both. The first set of dreams were quite bad.”

“Tell me.”

“Why do I need to tell you? You can reach in to my mind and pull them out, whether I like it or not.”

“We have a gentlemen’s agreement about my use of the Force on you personally.” Ren was distorting the truth horrendously, and Hux knew it. What they had had was a standing order from the Supreme Leader that Ren would not attempt the more heavy duty uses of the Force on Hux, as they were both the Supreme Leader’s protégés. It was not a personal agreement between the two of them. Ren continued, steering his words back toward the truth, “And the point is, I want to hear what you have to say about these dreams, and hear what _you_ think you think about them. In an interrogation, one learns most by careful comparison between what one already knows, and what the subject is willing to tell one. And how that subject chooses to say it.”

Hux stared at the corner of the room, avoiding making any eye contact with Ren. Interrogation. Uncanny. “Alright. I was on level B21. In one of the rooms. Not there to look around, though. I was in the interrogation chair. The restraints were on. I was fucking terrified, in this dream. It was odd. You came in. You had your mask on, as per usual procedure. You were saying things like ‘You are weak,’ ‘You are stupid,’ ‘You are unfit to lead.’ When I woke up, it was, well, peculiar, but I wasn’t particularly concerned about it. I just thought ‘I don’t care what that jumped-up prick thinks about how I run things. He can fuck off’. Because it was the sort of needlessly provocative shit you always used to be saying.”

“You were afraid in the dream, but not when it had ended?”

“That’s right. It was odd, but I rationalised it.”

“You said the dreams were bad – so they got worse?”

“Yes. The next time, the dream was the same, but you took your helmet off and looked me right in the eyes. I remember what you said, exactly. You said ‘Everything comes to an end. Everything. I could end this however I want,’ and then, you switched on your lightsaber and, well, you killed me. I woke up instantly, feeling somewhat disturbed by the experience, and I had to splash cold water on my face and look out of the viewport, there,” and he indicated the viewport in his bedroom with a wave of his hand, “for about two minutes before I felt comfortable going back to bed.”

“That’s exactly what I said? You remember?”

“Exactly, word for word.”

Ren adjusted his position to another uncomfortable looking pretzel shape and rested his chin on one hand. “Alright. And was there another dream?”

“Yes, there was another dream. The same thing, in the interrogation chair, scared out of my mind, then you come in, take off your helmet, look me in the eye, but this time,” Hux took a moment to breathe and gather the strength to carry on, “you said ‘I can end this however I want’ and you kissed me, like you kissed me tonight, except you had your hand behind the chair I was in, and this time you switched on your lightsaber, and it pierced us both. It killed us both.” Hux’s voice was choked. “When I woke up after that one, I was actually quite shaken. I had to make tea and drink the tea and watch the stars for a little while.”

“Those words?  ‘I _can_ end it?’”

“Yes.”

“Tell me more about how you felt. Try to remember.”  

Hux frowned, more with the effort of finding the right words than with the effort of trying to remember. “Sad. I think that’s the best word. I felt very sad. I kept remembering the part where you kissed me and I felt so sad. It was sweet but so so sad. Painful, actually. I think the nearest thing I can remember is when my dog died when I was a boy. But, no, it wasn’t like that at all. Sorry. I’m not making sufficient sense.” Hux paused again, to gather himself. He bit on the inside of his bottom lip and exhaled hard through his nose. “I was shaken up. I actually wasn’t quite right for the first hour or so of of my duty shift.” He sipped his tea and stared into the middle distance of the corner of the room. “But dreams are just brain garbage, aren’t they? That’s all they’re for, your brain taking out the trash. That’s what I was always told anyway. I never used to dream much at all. Never saw the point in it.”

“Dreams are not brain garbage, as you put it. Some of them may be, but dreams and visions can come from the Force.”

“Why would the Force be making me dream those things? I’m not even sensitive to it.”

“I should tell you, General, I had exactly the same visions. Exactly the same.”

“How can that possibly be? What do they mean? And why do I need to know what you’ve been dreaming about? I’ve always gone by the rule that the less I know about what goes on in your head the better for my sanity and my functioning as a professional officer.”

“As to the first question, we’ll get to that. And as to the second question, we will also get to that”. Ren pulled lazily at the stretchy fabric of his undershirt, pulling the sleeve down over his wrist as far as it would go and letting it snap back, eyes half closed, looking like a huge black cat. “What were the other dreams?” he asked.

 “OK. I dreamt I was swimming in a lake. This is a little bit after the first set of dreams, by the way, in case that’s important.”

“It might be. Carry on.”

“I was swimming in a lake. It was cool water, but not too cold. Good for swimming. You were there too. You were swimming ahead of me, and I couldn’t keep up. I was watching you get further ahead, and I couldn’t swim any more. My legs didn’t work. I called out to you but you were gone. I don’t remember any more after that.”

“I was ahead and you were behind? Interesting. Was there another version of that dream?”

“Yes. Two more. The second time I dreamt I was swimming in the lake, we swam together to a wooden platform. The lake was somewhere really beautiful, all forests and meadows. It’s the sort of place I’d like to go to on leave. If I ever got any leave. Anyway, we were sitting on the platform, and you saw something in the water, and dove in to get it. You went further and further down, out of sight. I got worried, and went in after you. I was looking for you, searching and searching in the water but I couldn’t see you. I went back to the surface for air and shouted for help, then I went back down. I was looking and looking but there was nothing there. I was panicking. The water was dark grey and black and cold and there was nothing, just drowning and death. Horrible.”

“You went in after me… and you drowned in the dream?”

“I think I must have. I remember panicking and darkness. I think it would be reasonable to infer drowning.”

“And the dream came to you again, a third time?”

“That time we both swam out to the platform, and we sat there. You put your head on my shoulder and you said something.” Hux looked at Ren and shook his head. “You said something that I would be sure that you, the Master of the Knights of Ren, would never say. It was very strange.” His pulse quickened as he remembered the improbable words. 

“Would you say that one was a bad dream or a good dream?”

“Good overall. Picturesque setting, nobody died.”

“I had those same dreams too. Those same visions. In the first two, it was the other way around. I was chasing you and couldn’t catch up, and I lost you under the water. The third one was exactly the same. We were on a platform and I said something to you. Which means,” he smiled, “I know what it is I said to you that you were too embarrassed to admit to me that I said to you.”

Hux blushed. He blinked a couple of times, chasing his embarrassment away, and continued.

“This last one is a dream I think I’ve only had once. It was more recent, just in the last two weeks. I was in a forest. It was like when we did field survival training as cadets, on a planet-side trip. I was collecting water, from a stream, and then we were going to be constructing a shelter. You were there and you were cutting down trees, small trees, with your lightsaber. And I remember thinking how that was cheating and totally unfair. You were stripping bark from the logs you’d cut, and cutting notches in them. Then you were dragging the logs around, physically dragging them, and I remember being surprised you weren’t using the Force, but I thought it was good you weren’t cheating. So I took a knife and started cutting strips of the inner layer of the bark, the way our special forces instructor had taught us to do, and plaiting them into cordage. Then I realised there were no other students around, and it wasn’t the field survival training course at all. It was just you and me.” He paused. “This is so strange. You’d put the logs together and made a little log cabin. It looked like hard work. I was quite impressed.” 

Hux blushed again as he told the story, because with the words “it looked like hard work” he had glossed over the image in his mind of Ren shirtless and sweating, heaving logs about and mopping his brow with his discarded shirt. As a gloss, “it looked like hard work” seemed better than “you looked really sexy, incredibly hot if I’m honest.” He looked down briefly, then looked up and continued telling the story to the corner of the room. “Anyway, you did use the Force to move the top logs into position, And we took handfuls of branches and wove some of the cordage between them, and made a roof out of that. It was a very good job; looked very good. Would have got a distinction at the Academy except you’d have been hauled up for cheating.”

Ren laughed. “No wonder you are the way you are if you think the Force is cheating”

“How do you mean, ‘the way I am’?”

 “Hux, think for a moment about all the things I really hate about you. Those things. That is what I am talking about.”

 “OK. I’ve not finished though. So, we were standing inside this structure, and you… you took my hand and you said something else that I’m sure you’d never say.”

Ren leaned forward with one knee against his chest and fixed Hux with an intense stare. “I had the same vision, Exactly the same. Quite recently. It’s what made me absolutely certain I had to come here and speak with you.”

 “How does a dream about building a log cabin have anything to do with you being on some sort of clandestine mission?”

 “Listen to me. I had the same vision. Sent to me by the Force in a way that made it immediately obvious to me, someone extremely strong in the perception of the Force and expert in its uses, that it was important. And by the way, that means once again, I remember exactly the words I used, the words that seems to be causing you to blush so prettily instead of repeating my own words back to me. Also, in my version, which was from my point of view, and in which I was at no point under the illusion of being in military school, you had grown a little beard.”

 “A beard? A beard?! I would _never_ grow a beard.”

 “You looked quite good with it. Very different, but rather handsome, I thought. Your hair was a little bit longer too,” Ren added with an almost vicious smile.

 “I do not do long hair. Or beards. Ever. I like to be neat.”

 “I know.”

  It seemed to Hux that he was in a dream right then, because nothing made sense. No meeting or encounter with the Knight Commander, formal or casual, had ever gone like this. There was no air of seething resentment, or of incoherent need. Nobody had said anything particularly spiteful. They had, it is true, embraced in something like the old familiar way that used to mean hands frantically tearing at robes and uniform, dragging each other to bed to tangle and writhe and take and use. But they had not done that. Yet, anyway. Ren had smiled and laughed and been almost like a friend. A friend! This insufferable prick! This selfish bastard! He had made toast. On a lightsaber. He had etched Hux’s name onto one of the pieces, like a lover’s gift, like the sort of thing you’d show everyone, “look, he made me toast and it’s got my name on it, isn’t he wonderful?” Of course you wouldn’t carry a piece of toast around with you everywhere because of the crumbs, but the principle stood.

 He had to ask. “Who are you?”

 The black haired cat-like beast of a man with legs sprawled across the bench and arms sprawled across the table lazily raised one eyebrow and replied with a “hmmm?”

 “You heard me.”

 “I am the same man I have always been.”

 “No, who are you? Who the fuck are you, because you are not the Kylo Ren I remember. Item one: I haven’t wanted to punch you very hard in the earhole since you walked in here this evening. Item two: Nobody is crying. Item three: nothing is either broken or on fire. Item four: you have taken off some of your clothes, but not all of them. I have noted your all or nothing approach to layering. It is one of your distinguishing characteristics, or as you put it just earlier, it is ‘the way you are’. Item four, b: We have been alone in each other’s company for longer than five minutes, but we aren’t actually fucking each other right at this moment. This is not the routine we used to have, not as I remember it. What is going on?”

“I am the same man I have always been.” Ren sat up straighter as he spoke. He pointed to the long scar across his face. Then he lifted his undershirt and indicated the white nebula of a scar on his lower abdomen. The wounds from which he was recovering the last time they saw each other, a year before. “On my face. On my side. The same. I am the same man I have always been.”

“I can see it. You are acting very bloody oddly, though. Even for you.”

“Since I have been away, I have learnt much of the Force, and through the Force. My perceptions are more accurate. My powers are stronger. Perhaps this has changed how you see me.”

Hux sighed long and hard at this bullshit non-answer. Ren was starting to annoy him in the old familiar way, and it was oddly reassuring. “You keep saying you’ve learned so much, but would you please tell me what is going on. At least tell me what you think I need to know.”

“We know that dreams and visions come from the Force,” Ren began, leaving Hux to wonder who the hell was meant by “we”. “When the connection between two people is strong, a vision can be sent between them over great distances, by one Force-sensitive person to another, or from a Force-trained person to a non-sensitive person. The latter requires much more strength and attunement to the flow of the Force that exists between the two people. This technique can be used to send a person mad. It can be used to control them. Or it can be used to send a message.” He spread his arms out wide, stretched his fingers out wide, and looked keenly at Hux. “Are you seeing it yet?”

Hux looked both helpless and exasperated. “You know all this Force stuff is a closed book to me. I don’t know. What? You’re trying to send me mad?”

“Not intentionally.”

Hux went over Ren’s words again in his head. “OK, I think I’m following. You’ve sent me these dreams to tell me something. You could have just emailed, by the way. At any time.”

“There were long periods of time when I could _not_ have emailed. Periods of isolation. It was…” Ren’s face looked pained again. 

“I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me. Do continue.”

“I had to send those visions through the Force and then go on to prove that you received them. Because… think about it, Hux. What did I just say?”

“Which bit?”

“When the connection…”

Hux made use of his rather good short term memory, and recited the start of Ren’s speech back to him. “When the connection between two people is strong… oh.” 

Ren brought his hands together with a “Yes!” He rocked his clasped palms to and fro and nodded, eyes fixed on Hux, lip bitten in excitement. “I had those visions and sent them to you as a test, to see if you received them and to find out what you thought about them, what you felt. I had come to realise that the connection between us was stronger than I had thought.”

“If you say so,” Hux shrugged. “No, that's unfair of me.” His face softened despite him.

“This process was more a test of me than a test of you; although, I’ll be honest, in a lesser way it was also a test of you. Which you have passed.”

“And you? Have you passed?”

“I have passed the first part of the test. I have done the first part of what was asked of me. You have helped me. I hope you can continue to help me.”

“Help you with what? If I knew for once what your mission actually was, it would be a start.”

“Be patient. We’ll talk specifics later. I have to make plans.”

“Wait, what? You’re telling _me_ to be patient, and _you_ are going to make _plans_?”

“You can help me make the plans. I’ll let you do a spreadsheet if you’re good.”

“Look, when is this ‘later’ going to be? I am on duty at 0800h. Roster pattern A.”

“You might need to find a window in your schedule.”

Hux looked pained and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “I am so fucking busy. I have briefings, project management, strategy meetings, training simulator reports, requisitions to sign off on; I have duty hours on the bridge, and I have so much fucking email. You don’t even do email. You do fucking telepathy.” 

He sat down on the bench beside Ren. “I will try to help you. I will try to find you a fifteen minute slot. I can set an early alarm and we can discuss whatever it is you need to discuss before I start my hours, and then I can give you fifteen minutes and no more than fifteen minutes, probably at 1430h. Not like I need sleep, is it?”

“You need sleep to dream.”

“Those dreams – why haven’t you told me what they meant to you, and what is the big deal with the one in the forest? Why is that the one that made you come here? You keep hinting at something. I don’t like mysteries and I don’t like talking in riddles.”

“The dreams about the interrogation chair and those about the lake, they were concerned with changing things. Showing me I can change things. They were also about you and me. And the forest scene: that was about the future. I feel very strongly, and it is extremely unlikely that I am mistaken, that it has a very strong chance of coming true. The Force tells me that.”

“You’re going to build a log cabin?  Dreams come true, we’re going to a forest and I’m going to grow a beard and you’re going to build a log cabin? Bollocks.”

Ren leant towards him. “I’ll hold your hand and say sweet things to you. In fact I’m holding your hand right now. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

Hux felt his insides melt like butter on a heat duct. Ren squeezed his hand. “Shall we go to bed?”


End file.
